Tag: Tennessee

Tag: Tennessee

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Nashville, Tennessee. My trip to Nashville was for a work conference, and while I was excited to travel for work (as I usually am), I was not exactly excited to be going to Nashville. You see, the first thing I think of when I think of Nashville is something like this.

There’s a joke I tend to make reference to when a friend of mine brings up their affinity for country music. Ere are many iterations of the joke, but it goes a little like this.

Q: What do you get when you play a country song backwards?

A: A happy man who gets his wife and dog back, as well as a functional truck, all while overcoming alcoholism.

Nashville strongly markets itself to be the country music capital of the world. As they rightly should. After all, the city is home to the Grand Ole Opry, numerous country music stars, and the largest volume of sweet tea per capita in the world((No idea if this is actually true, but it felt true. And it was delicious.)). But beneath the surface, you have a city that is completely not country music like at all. And by that, I mean it doesn’t suck.

The above table and food remnants are from a dinner we had after our event. The restaurant in question is a place by the name of Sambuca. The sky loft area that we were in was swanky enough that the above picture prompted my fiancée to ask me if I was actually in Nashville or in a club in Miami. I sent her the following picture of the Nashville skyline to assure her that I was not, in fact, clubbing with Pitbull((No one wants to party with Pitbull. Even Pitbull.)).

There’s wonderful entertainment in Nashville. They have a NFL team that’s not terrible, a NHL team that’s pretty good, on of the most prestigious universities in America (Vanderbilt), and a full-scale replica of the Parthenon. Ignore the fact that Nashville is like Athens, Greece in the same way that ice cream is like Tabasco sauce. There’s some really cool shit in Nashville.

And yet…this is what Nashville markets itself as.

Image credit to Celine on Flickr.

It’s a shame too. Nashville could easily market itself as Little New Orelans (due to its reputation as a party city) or a less drug-infested Miami. That said, the city seems content sitting on its roots. That’s fine for some, but to me, it seems like a giant waste of potential.